Hand-operated devices such as hand rollers and adhesive rollers are known for transferring a film from a carrier tape onto a substrate. Such tools are found useful in offices, for example, for transferring an adhesive film from a carrier tape onto paper for the purpose of attaching sheets together. In this manner, a very clean and precise application of the adhesive layer can be accomplished. However, these hand rollers rapidly gather dust when not in use, and they also have problems with an adhesive fluid drying on.
There is a type of hand roller already on the market having a transferrable adhesive film on a carrier tape with a feed reel for the tape and a wind-up reel which are kept in a two-piece housing. To change both reels, the two pieces of the housing are taken apart, then the two reels are taken off their two pivot pins and the new reels placed thereon. In the housing, there is also a diagonally protruding applicator element for pressing the tape against the substrate. This applicator element has the form of a swivelable lever pressed up by a spring located in the housing. When the user wishes to change the tape, the tape coming from the feed reel must be threaded over the free end of this lever and then led back to the wind-up reel in the housing. The feed reel and the wind-up reel are coupled with one another by a clutch coupling. At the end of this applicator lever there is a relatively large round transverse bolt or pivot, over which the tape is bent, and this bolt extends sufficiently far beyond the lever holding it that when (during use of the tool) it is pushed out of its rest position against the spring pressure, it can move against the spring sufficiently far as to hit the housing.
This known type of hand-operated device has the disadvantage that in changing the reels, both reels must be individually placed on the pivot pins and moreover the tape between the two reels must be manually threaded over the applicator element which protrudes from the housing. This demands considerable care and skill, and has the risk that the hands of the person doing the changing of the reels will become dirty, also that the the working parts of the apparatus (for instance the drive or coupling) will also become dirty, this perhaps resulting in malfunction or even failure of the apparatus.